Eye for an Eye

back.’
    ‘In the storm?’
    ‘Aye. After midnight.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘It looked like she was feeding that stupid cat of hers.’
    Gilchrist frowned. ‘What’s stupid about the cat?’
    Ian shrugged. ‘They say she’s a witch.’
    ‘The cat?’
    ‘No, Lex Garvie.’
    ‘Who says she’s a witch?’
    ‘Just some of my friends.’
    ‘Not the ones you fight with?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘They play the guitar, too?’
    ‘Not all of them. Tam plays the drums. He’s dead good, so he is.’
    ‘What makes them think she’s a witch?’
    ‘Just stuff.’
    ‘What sort of stuff?’
    Another shrug.
    ‘I see,’ said Gilchrist.
    ‘You dinnae believe me. I can tell.’
    ‘I’m too old to believe everything I hear first time now, Ian. Growing older makes you cynical.’ Gilchrist waited, but the boy offered nothing more. ‘I’ll look into what you’ve told me, Ian. You’ve been extremely helpful.’
    ‘Can I go now?’
    ‘Back to bed?’
    ‘I was listening to music.’
    ‘Sure.’
    Gilchrist returned to the kitchen.
    Mrs McLaren told him she had watched television, to drown out
thon racket
from upstairs, then taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed. There was no Mr McLaren. He had died in a fishing accident seven years earlier. Gilchrist thanked her for her time and declined her invitation to try her Madeira cake.
    ‘Are you sure you cannae be tempted? It’s straight from the oven.’
    ‘Positive, Mrs McLaren.’
    ‘If that’s the way you feel, then.’
    Outside, the wind had risen. Gilchrist switched on his mobile. He had missed a call. Jack’s number flashed up.
    At last. His son had finally deigned to call.
    But Gilchrist had too much on his mind to call straight back. Something was niggling him about Nance’s comment.
    From a distance, a woman might be mistaken for a man.
    Is it possible MacMillan saw a woman?
    Gilchrist was intrigued to meet the witch next door.
     
    Sebbie stepped onto the West Sands, an expansive stretch of beach that rippled to the sea. He crossed puddles that glinted as dull as pewter, his worn trainers casting shallow prints that welled like his mother’s eyes. He reached the shoreline and breathed in the smell of salt, the faint stench of seaweed. A breeze bristled his hair and sent a shiver through him.
    The tide had turned. The sea was creeping shoreward.
    He scuffed the damp sand. It was here on the West Sands that his father’s body had been found. The memory of that day seemed unreal now. But the sand was real. The sea was real. The air that chilled his lungs was real. His loneliness was real, too.
    With his toe he sketched a human shape and remembered how his father had lain there, his flaccid skin as white as milk, his body emptied of blood through the red gash in his neck. Water lapped at Sebbie’s feet and the advancing tide obliterated his imprint of his father’s left leg, then dribbled along the ruts in the sand, taking the left hand next, then the arm. Two minutes later there was nothing left.
    Even when the sea splashed his toes, Sebbie did not move. Not until a wave lapped over his ankles.
    Further up the beach, he kneeled, scooped a handful of damp sand, ignored the wind, the cold and the advancing waters. Within a couple of minutes he had dug a hole some twelve inches deep, its shallow sides collapsing from seeping water. He pulled off his trainers and crammed them into it, his fingers like metal tines, scraping deep into the liquid bottom. He pushed sand back in and flattened and patted the surface until all that remained was an area smoothed of ripples, darker than the surrounding sand.
    As the waters edged over his covered spot, it struck him that his symbolic tribute had exorcized the sense of loss he had harboured since the day his father’s body had floated in on the surf three years earlier.
    By that simple action, some burden had been lifted. And he saw then that he needed to pay tribute to his mother, but a different type of tribute, a get-even type of tribute.
    Someone had screwed up the investigation.
    Now that someone was going to suffer.

CHAPTER 9
     
    ‘Look after it for fifteen minutes, Cindy.’
    Beth pulled on her suede jacket. As she opened the door, the pungent stench of Dettol caught the back of her throat. With an overpowering need to breathe in fresh air, she rushed across the tiled entranceway.
    Away from the shop, she tried to recall what the man had looked like. She was no good with faces. Never had been. Names, yes. Which